History Headscratchers / KingdomCome

* The novelization of ''KingdomCome'' says that Power Woman/Girl dies in the nuclear blast, but if Superman survived the blast why didn't she if she's presumably Kryptonian in this universe too? It just doesn't add up.

** Or she's simply not Kryptonian in that universe.

**** But wait, If she isn't his cousin in the KingdomCome time line, then how come in the JSA story that crossed over with KingdomCome it's her that's his BerserkButton upon returning? Also he calls her Kara. Was that still her name during the Atlantean era?

* What happened to all the characters of the DCU not used in KingdomCome?

** Superman would have prevented it from killing anybody, and the war of supers would have raged unchecked across the world leaving devastation in its wake. The two options were letting humanity destroy the supers, or letting the supers destroy humanity. It was a Third Option because he found a way to instead help them live together in relative peace.

** Who says he's German? He could be Austrian, which makes a little more sense considering it's a bit closer, and fits with his whole "Hitler {{expy}}" thing. The way I see it he either moved there to take it over, or he just speaks German to be pretentious. He doesn't even really speak good German “No trouble Cosmonaut" indeed.

** Same reason the only living male Flash is either Jay Garrick or all the male flashes merged with the speed force and projecting as a singular being in Jay's image. Same reason Beast Boy can now only change into mythical creatures. The same reason the only Green Lanterns appear to be tied to the Golden Age Green Lantern.
* What I really think triggered the whole NAH running riot really was that having Magog's name cleared of charges gave the wrong message to the NAH generation - that they can take a life and create collateral damage and not take responsibility, which is what Kingdom Come really all about. It's not "NAH suck, GAH rule." Sure, it's what it looks like, but what Supes and all the others attempted to do is showing that generation that every action they do has to be done with responsibility. On the other hand, Supes' mistake was simple - a deconstruction of the superhero, if you will. Do people really need superheroes when superthreats are gone, or should human beings police their own? From the resolution of the story, it is evident that "living WITH the humans and not ABOVE them" it is fairly evident that we are getting a different sort of doctrine,which I daresay does have some theological aspect; in reasoning it out, why is it better that mightier forces (even in the family environment, i.e. parent-child relationship) do not intervene with certain problems that do not require their services? It would be spoon feeding and will subsequently hinder any potential development, in this case for the "man" to become closer to the "super" thanks to their own effort and adaptation.
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* While I like the book and wasn't expecting anything different, given that both writer and artist are big fans of TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks, the idea that Magog doing what he felt had to be done and killing the Joker - a morally ambiguous act, yes, but one that few would disagree with - prompts the new wave of heroes to believe that killing and indiscriminate violence is OK bugs me beyond belief.
** Part of the point of the story is that we're supposed to agree Magog ''shouldn't'' have killed the Joker; the new "heroes" started rationalizing their own violent acts, and eventually, in-universe {{Flanderization}} occurred. It was a bit more organic than Joker's death sparking all-out superwar.
** That's an oversimplification. It took ten years for the world to settle into its current framework, though the killing off the supervillains was a major factor, you can't blame it entirely on Magog's trial. Most of the "new breed" are bored teenagers with superpowers who would readily kill a villain without being told to. Also recall that Luthor and the other human villains were manipulating things behind the scenes. Chaos was good for them.
** Assuming you're speaking in-universe, "a morally ambiguous act, yes, but one that few would disagree with " is projection. The new heroes have grown up, their entire lives in varying degrees of terror. They have always known fear because of the many villains. They see the Silver Age heroes as ineffectual, and rally behind Magog.
** You mean TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks. The original Golden Age Superman wouldn't let Magog kill the complete monster like Joker (who just killed his wife and dozens of other people) - he would do it himself. And no it wouldn't make him [[JusticeLeague go all fascist and take over the world]]. He was a hero not antihero (definitely not Nineties Antihero). ValuesDissonance indeed.
* You know what Bugs me, how one sided and preachy Kingdom Come comes off as. I like the art, the whole "biblical imagery" theme, and the idea of [[TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Age]] antiheroes in conflict against the [[TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] heroes, but the way it's all "[[TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] is the only legitimate option" and how it lead to over a decade worth of the whole sale removal of everything resembling the [[TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Age]] from DC canon is just mind-boggling. 10 years later, InfiniteCrisis was just one big excuse force feed us the same garbage. It would have been much better if the message was "there's room in the DCU for both kinds of characters" not "the new characters suck, the old characters where better" Shoved down all our throats. A better ending would be Superman and Magog realizing that although their methods are different they share the same goals and should be working together.
** It's not one sided; both classic superheroes and 90's superheroes are regarded as "out of touch with mankind" since the old guard pretty much believes themselves to be above humans since they are the good guys, and the new breed of supers just don't care as long as there is a good fight. Even the Spectre, an angel, has trouble seeing the difference between right and wrong. I don't know how many of you read it when it was being published, as separate books, but it was just at the peak of 90's superheroes popularity, so it was a contemporaneous critique, not one made in hindsight. The story proved itself right in that very few, if any, of the 90's dark heroes made it to the turn of the millennium.
Now, even the old guard didn't come off unscratched, most of the conflict came from the fact that Superman refused to compromise his beliefs, completely absorbed by his morals, Batman had turned into a fascist, and Wonder Woman was courting with the dark side out of hurt pride for being stripped of her ambassador status; she didn't fight the wrongs because she believed they were wrong, she was just looking for someone to punch senseless and blow off some steam.
**You are also forgetting that in the end, it took the sacrifice of Captain Marvel, in a very anvilicious portray of the "death of innocence" to bring the conflict to an "end". After Marvel died and the pastor spoke to Superman pleading to his human side, Clark Kent; the old guard realized their ways had also being wrong since they forgot to protect the humans and the innocent. Magog didn't repent because the old guard was "better", he repent because his actions had consequences, and his ways had killed millions in a direct way and he learned of the responsibilities he had the hard way; look at it this way, yeah, he got rid of the Parasite, a pretty dangerous supervillain, at the minimum cost of irradiating all of Kansas and killing millions of innocent bystanders. Anvilicious? Certainly, but one of the many ways in which 90's superheroes behaved at the time.
**Now regarding infinite crisis, you seem to miss the point that Superboy Prime is the only one complaining the current DC universe is not like the silverage, and he is the VILLAIN of the story. One second he complains the new heroes are "too dark" and the next he kills them without thinking because "they are not real and they are wrong". Yep, he's the embodiment of the 90's fans alright.
*** Is he? Because this description looks more like modern writers who hate the Dark Age, bring back the Silver Age elements... and the level of blood and violence in their stories is higher than Dark Age's ever was. It seems that like the only thing many people saw in Watchmen was its darkness and antiheroes, the only thing many people saw in KC was 'Dark Age sucks'.
** Magog's methods involve killing criminals. There really isn't any room between someone who catches suspects and delivers them to justice, and someone who wants to bypass the justice system and execute criminals himself. Superman ''cannot'' just live and let live when doing so means letting people die at Magog and the others' hands. Magog forced the issue in a way that left no middle ground. Either he has to give up his murderous view of being a superhero (which he eventually does), or Superman has to accept that Magog's allowed to kill criminals (which isn't going to happen). You might say that simply having Superman as Earth's champion limits how much DarkerAndEdgier the DC writers can allow their heroes to get: if anyone like ''ThePunisher'' or ''TheAuthority'' came along and made too big a name for themselves, it'd strain credulity to think that Superman wouldn't get involved.
*** And now that I think about it, I wonder if the whole ''Death of Superman'' story was an attempt by DC to test the waters and see if they could turn Superman into a LegacyCharacter, one with a less stringent ThouShaltNotKill code that would let them really get into the NinetiesAntihero market. Since fans gave a thunderous "no" to all four of his potential replacements, they had to bring the original Superman back and just deal with the moral limitations his existence places on the rest of the Earth-based, present-day DCU. I'd speculate that the same thing might be going on with Batman and the nearly constant failed attempts to turn him into a LegacyCharacter, since he also has a no-kill policy that would put him at odds with any heroes DarkerAndEdgier than him.
*** Death of Superman was ''filler'', it was written purely because of ExecutiveMeddling that postponed Superman's marrying Lois (the DC execs wanted the comic marriage to coincide with the marriage on ''Lois & Clark'', which was still a season away). So the writers, stuck for something to do for a years' worth of stories, said "Let's just kill him!"
** Leaving no middle ground? Kind of like how KingdomCome left no middle ground? "You can have a NinetiesAntiHero, or a [[TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] hero but not both" What kind of garbage is that? I understand the whole "I don't like how DarkerAndEdgier is becoming the be all and end all" but that doesn't mean you should do away with it all together! That just ends up pissing off people who hate all the crappy [[TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] nostalgia garbage that's been force fed to us since KingdomCome. Why can't we have both? Camp for fans of Camp, and Dark for fans of Dark?
*** Kingdom Come ended in a middle ground, with supers working WITH humans to improve their lifestyle, not ABOVE humans, they realized they weren't better because of their powers or beliefs. That was pretty much the point of leaving the final decision to Captain Marvel/Billy Batson, since he was both a godlike being and a human; and even a brainwashed Billy could see the conflict made no sense. Billy stands in for the human reader; since we are supposed to know both real real and real fiction. Superman calls him on that, he tells Batson that "I know I can stop the bomb, that much I'm certain, what I don't know is if I should be allowed to." If you choose to get offended because most people like their escapist fiction to feature heroic, well centered and upstanding characters, well that's too bad; but riddle me this, how many dark age comics have endured to this date? Exactly. (I'm willing to concede that at least Spawn was interesting in its premise, and that he only resorted to guns because he was a mercenary in life, and the whole green magic counter running off; but out of all the books out of the dark age, it is the only one remotely interesting to read).
**** The reason there aren't anymore is because KingdomCome killed them.
***** If it's possible for one single mini-series to kill off a whole sub-genre of comics, maybe it was that sub-genre's time to go.
***** Oh, c'mon, Kingdom Come didn't kill the DarkAge, it was already dying of natural causes when KC came out. Even {{Watchmen}} couldn't have ended the BronzeAge by itself if the tastes of the public weren't already changing. We only find convenient for clasification reasons to pick a well-known an well-liked work and use it as the end of a period and the begining of other. The truth is, the [[NinetiesAntiHero nineties anti-hero]] was a fad and it ended like every fad ends. If it were still financially succesfull, be sure they would be doing it, but practically nobody likes it anymore. And if you like dark, there's a lot of dark works being made nowadays by [[MarvelComics Marvel]], {{Wildstorm}}, [[DarkHorseComics Dark Horse]] and others, damn, probably is being done more "dark" than "camp" if you take all into acount, and a lot better than it was done in the nineties to boot, but [[DCComics mainstream DC]], who wasn't strong on it even in the nineties, is probably not the best place to look for it. And this using your definition of "camp", because dividing all the works in "dark" and "camp" without nothing in between is ridiculously simplistic, and saying that nowadays everything falls in the "camp" side of your simplistic clasification is more than a little near-sighted. I don't think nowadays there's being made a lot of "camp" by any definition of {{Camp}} that is not "whatever doesn't measure to my standards of darkness".
** You CAN have both. Read DC and read Marvel or Wildstorm or Dark Horse or Image. Or read DC's Lobo or some of the Green Lantern titles (hey, if it's DarkerAndEdgier you want, you should love the ''Blackest Night'' story). But you cannot have Superman, Batman and the rest of the traditional DC heroes and DarkerAndEdgier heroes in the ''same setting'' without raising the obvious question of why the hell the traditional good guys haven't beaten the tar out of the newcomers. THAT's the point ''Kingdom Come'' (and other [[strike: titles]] stories like ''What's so Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way?'', as well as pretty much anyone who tries to be Batman but isn't Bruce Wayne) is making. The market already has plenty of DarkerAndEdgier heroes. Just don't expect them to live and work in-universe alongside Superman, because it wouldn't make any sense.
** You missed the entire point I was trying to make, so I'll leave you with it because you clearly don't understand.
** No, I understand your point just fine. But in your righteous indignation over feeling like DC's insulted your reading tastes, you don't seem to understand the difference between your preference as a reader and the moral code that, simply by having Superman as their leading superhero, defines their setting. Let's put it this way. You said "a better ending would be Superman and Magog realizing that although their methods are different they share the same goals and should be working together". Are you seriously saying that Superman should allow other heroes to go around killing people just because they "share the same goals"? Any perceived issues you have with him not doing that is nothing compared to the monumental CharacterDerailment it'd represent if he did.
*** No you don't. Because of KingdomCome literally NOBODY is playing [[NinetiesAntiHero Nineties Anti Heroes]] straight anymore, and there's been no attempt what so ever at {{Reconstruction}} "What's that? Some people like Nineties Anti Heroes? Some people grew up with them? Oh well, they suck, let's just use the kind of characters we grew up with and like!" It's bullshit!
**** Not to get off topic here, but I though I should bring this up. While it's true that a major {{Reconstruction}} of the NinetiesAntiHero is impossible to find in comics, a very good {{Reconstruction}} can be found in the video game of TheDarkness. I highly recommend it to any fan of TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks, as well as anyone who wonders why people like TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks.
*** Oh get over your damn butthurt already. Yeah, I read Cable, I read the Punisher, I read Spawn, I KNOW about {{NinetiesAntihero}}es. And when DC's in-universe mascot is a midwestern boy scout one step below God who protects the whole world on a person-by-person basis they CANNOT consistently have characters like that running around unless they do something about him first. Superman, Batman and the JLA's traditional lineup have a ''hell'' of a lot more fans than people like you. I already quite reasonably and politely pointed out that every time DC has tried to make room for DarkerAndEdgier characters, they have to back-peddle in a hurry because their fans aren't having it. DC hires writers and editors who hate {{NinetiesAntihero}}es and write stories like ''Kingdom Come'' because it's ''good business''. Their accountants aren't worried about your hurt feelings.
**** Hell, now that I think about it, if you ''really'' want a NinetiesAntihero DC title, read ''All Star Batman and Robin''. There you go, DarkerAndEdgier to the point of pure [[HeroicSociopath heroic sociopathy]], written by Frank Miller himself (it even solved the "what do we do with Superman and the Justice League" question by making Superman and Green Lantern simpering wusses, and Wonder Woman a fellow sociopath). Except all the other DC fans ''hated'' it and made it the laughing stock of the company, while praising the {{Reconstruction}} ''All Star Superman'' series that ran alongside it. And that right there should tell you everything you need to know about why DC doesn't do {{Nineties Antihero}}es.
***** Except ASBAR was Parody. I don't want parody. I want the kind of comics I grew up with.
****** ASBAR was not advertised as a parody. The All-Star line was basically pushed as each of the characters they featured at their most iconic. If ASBAR was a parody then either someone was lied to or Batman at his most iconic is a parody.
*** Plus, let's be honest; there's a reasonable case to be made that "ASBAR is a parody" is a case of IMeantToDoThat that Miller and DC were forced into when people who weren't spitting blood at what Miller was doing to Batman and Robin were instead laughing uproariously at what was going on. When they first announced it, there was no indication of any kind that readers were ''supposed'' to think of it as a parody.
****** No, what you really want is that they give you back [[NostalgiaFilter the sensations you felt when you were thirteen years old]], but that's impossible because you're not thirteen years anymore. Deal with it.
*** The new Vigilante series. The new Azrael series. Secret Six. They all feature antiheroes. They don't feature Nineties Anti Heroes, no. But there's definitely a darker tint than the normal DC fare.
**** As for "nobody" ...um, Marvel? They've pretty much never stopped their NinetiesAntihero kick, and they've always been DarkerAndEdgier than DC. Punisher's still being published, Wolverine's still doing his rage-fueled, morally questionable heroics, and now there's X-23 for twice the bloodshed. And if we need to get even darker and grittier than that, there's the ''Ultimate'' titles...
** This is just my two cents, but I can completely see Kingdom Come having a hard stance against the Dark Age, and indeed anything that's happened since the Silver Age. Alex Ross is infamous for his love of the Silver Age and his distaste for anything that came afterward. Behind the scenes, he wanted to use Hal Jordan as the Green Lantern for the story, but couldn't because he was Parallax at the time. Since he completely hated Kyle Rayner, he was forced into using Alan Scott (and gave him multiple Hal-influences, like "New Oa"). His favorite Flash is Barry Allen, but since Barry was dead, he claimed the Flash used in the story had Wally's body, but contained "The spirit of every Flash incarnation." He didn't even like Dick Grayson as Nightwing, so he invented the Red Robin persona as a way to turn him back into Robin. Don't get me wrong, I love the book, and I think Mark Waid (one of the best writers in the medium) really toned down Ross's Silver Age mania. But I can definitely see a stance of "Our Heroes Are Better" to the whole thing, which I'll admit has turned me off the last few times I've read it (given how much DC itself has indulged itself to the Silver Age lately by resurrecting Hal and Barry). Of course, at the time Kingdom Come was released, the Dark Age was said to be getting way out of hand, so this might be a case of SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped.
*** Yeah. Ross can be a real tool sometimes. Recently there was a contest in which the winner would get an original Ross poster depicting whatever they wanted. The girl who won asked for a picture of Cassandra Cain and Barbara Gordon fighting. Instead of making the picture like he said he would, Ross instead sent the girl ([[KickTheDog who was about 13 I think]]) a letter saying how Cassandra would never be the ''real'' Batgirl, and how anyone who liked her was an idiot, and how it was a waste of his talent to draw her. Can we say SmallNameBigEgo?
**** Just curious, could you maybe give a link for that? I can't find a reference to the event on Ross's wikipedia page, but I'd like to know if this is true...if it is, that sucks for the girl.
*** Or not. Really it's just [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch Complaining about comics you don't read]], as Waid and Ross are completely out of touch with their presentation of this as the "Logical Conclusion" of NinetiesAntiHero tropes. I grew up with character like this, and although they are troubled, they are still, at their heart, good people, and would not just form gangs and fight each other because of boredom. One gets the impression that neither of them read a comic that came out after 1980.
**** You do remember Waid was the one who made the Wally West Flash a fan favorite? Complain about his attitude towards NinetiesAntiHero all you want, but if he was stuck in a pre-1980's frame of mind he'd have made Wally into Barry 2.0.
***** He was also behind the [[SoBadItsHorrible God awful]] Acclaim Era XO-Manowar reboot that helped kill ValiantComics. Consider that before you label him "one of the best writers in the medium". Ugh.
***** Where did I call him "one of the best"? Sorry if I was condescending, but putting words in my mouth hurts whatever counterpoint you want to make. So before this gets any uglier let's call it a day.
** The original point was what I was aiming for with the JBM above this one. Again, while I like the story, it's more or less character assassination of the NinetiesAntiHero - every step of the way, the [[TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] heroes are presented as the unquestionable good guys and the new generation of heroes as little more than impetuous nuisances. Where's the balance? Where's the NAH who is savvy enough to grasp that, hey, since the Joker breaks out of Arkham all the fucking time and goes a-murdering because he knows he'll never be killed, how about we waste him and save lives? Oh wait, I remember. He's involved in the Kansas tragedy and ends up as less than one of Superman's followers. For such a supposed good writer, Mark Waid doesn't seem too concerned about presenting a balanced view.
*** Because that's not what the NinetiesAntiHero is about. He's about violence and lots of it. There are plenty of antiheroes still being published by DC. Yes, most of them are in the Vertigo or Wildstorm imprints, but they're there. A cautious, nuanced character who says, "It's irrational to allow the Joker to live when we know he'll kill again," and kills him to prevent the loss of any more life ''isn't'' a NinetiesAntiHero. He might be an AntiHero. He might even be just a Hero--Superman and Batman have both been on the edge of taking a life. But a rational person who doesn't take any joy in violence and sees it as a means to an end is not a NinetiesAntiHero.
*** I don't know, I think the idea that the NinetiesAntiHero is about violence and nothing but might be a bit unfair. The Punisher is a well-known Nineties Anti Hero and he used to be portrayed as conflicted over his rather grim mission and only killing because he was protecting the innocent. Venom also has his "Don't hurt the innocent" bit when he's not being used as a villain for Spidey. I will admit, I don't know too much about NinetiesAntiHeros of the era so I could very well be wrong, but the only one who I can think of that had a "violence, violence, VIOLENCE" attitude was Lobo, who's purely tongue-in-cheek. It would be equally easy for someone who doesn't like Superman to say "He's just this cardboard cut-out who spouts cheesy morals" when everyone who's read a story about old Supes know that's anything but true. The way NinetiesAntiHeros are portrayed in Kingdom Come sets them up as Strawmen for Superman and the Justice League to look better than. It works for most of them, like the ones who get into super-powered gang wars, but others don't seem so much violent as practical. Given the endless atrocities The Joker can pull off since Arkham can't contain or cure him, when Magog shot him, I didn't see it as an act of insane violence- I saw it as a morally-grey, but arguably very sensible course of action. But Magog is turned into a Strawman anyway by continuing to use excessive force against other supervillains and by his assholic-behavior toward Superman. Like I said, the book is good, It Just Bugs Me.
** Is the Punisher really a Nineties Anti-Hero though? He was around well before then, he isn't overly muscled, his weaponry is at least mostly reality based and not larger than him.
*** Perhaps it was a bit unfair, yes. Or at least imprecise. The books that star [[NinetiesAntiHero Nineties Anti-Heroes]] are usually showcases for violence, but the protagonists themselves don't usually take delight in it. But the point I was originally going for is that it seems kind of silly to ask for a NinetiesAntiHero who's reasonable and savvy (and, presumably, doesn't blow everything up) when that genre doesn't allow for it. The thing that differentiates the NinetiesAntiHero from the run-of-the-mill AntiHero is the lack of nuance, that he is so over the top, that he blows up drug houses and has guns bigger than his head.
** ThisTroper's feelings on the subject can best be summed up in this forum post: "Have a DC civil war between a set of heroes that become fascists, and a set of heroes that are libertarians...wait, wasn't that Kingdom Come? scrap that..."
*** I disagree with that interpretation. The whole point of Libertarianism is you can do whatever you want AS LONG AS it doesn't hurt others. So if they battled for fun in the desert then they'd be libertarians. But they battle in the city, so they're sociopaths.
**** Libertarianism has a consistent problem with the whole "unless I can justify it" clause. In this case its incredibly simple: they're not hurting individuals they're hurting a whole society and groups don't have rights.
***** As a libertarian at heart, I have to say that I disagree with the troper directly above me. Libertarianism does focus on individuality, yes, but individuals make up groups as well. The rights of an individual, in my mind, would be compiled as those individuals would group together. But that is my personal belief, not necessarily what "mainstream" libertarianism talks about. Also, to address the point of one of the tropers above me-- the one that "wanted the comics [s/he] grew up with" and referring to [[NinetiesAntiHero Nineties Anti-Heroes]] when saying that-- I grew up in the 90s too, and while I do enjoy many of the gritty characters like Wolverine and X-23, I still much prefer those like Superman and Captain Marvel, the ones that are undoubtedly heroic and valiant.
** Part of the problem was that at the time of the writing, TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks was still happening, and a lot of people were sick of the DarkerAndEdgier elements taking everything over. This book was a way to strike back, beginning the attempt to make the DC Universe LighterAndSofter again. The other viewpoint was represented by the rest of the medium, and the book itself worked as a balance to that.
*** As I said above, that was kind of the point of the book, yes. At the time of writing it was a serious case of SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped (I can recall Grant Morrison summing up how much this story was needed in the superhero climate of the day). That particular aspect of the book has aged poorly though; now most of DC has backslid into the Silver Age while retaining the DarkerAndEdgier aspects that they attacked DarkAge comics for. Reading the book today gives it a very weird, almost hypocritical feel, especially if you're not a fan of the Silver Age revival stuff. The book is still good. ItJustBugsMe.

* Let's disregard the larger context here. Let's put aside the concept of the NinetiesAntiHero, the entire [[TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Age]], and everything comics became. Let's just look at Magog's choice. He took a life. The life of someone who'd just taken many, many lives. Who'd taken many lives many times before. And who would take many lives in the future, over and over and over. What do the idealists have to offer in comparison? Flowers on the graves of his victims? Inaction is itself a choice, and ''not'' killing the Joker means a choice to let him kill again [[CardboardPrison as soon as he breaks out of Arkham again]]. It's a choice [[JokerImmunity the writers can benefit from]], but it's still moral cowardice. The dead don't care if your conscience is clean.
** I don't think anyone's attacked his actions in ''that'' instance. However, the jury should never have nullified his decision. If Magog felt that his being judged as a murderer was a small price to pay for ridding the world of the Joker (which he did, by turning himself in), then that's a decision that most readers can respect and admire. But the jury refusing to convict him of the crime he obviously committed was a travesty of justice, and Superman was right to be disillusioned by it. By refusing to convict him of being a vigilante, the public essentially handed the law over to Magog and other superheroes. And like every historical instance of a fearful public giving absolute authority to its protectors, they came to regret it.
*** I disagree. I think the Jury was justified in their decision. If someone "murdered" Osama Bin Laden, then what jury would convict him? Now if someone who was Osama Bin Laden, and Charles Manson all rolled into one, continually escaped prison, and killed as many people as some dictators, and did it a manner so shockingly nightmarish, then would you vote guilty if you where on that jury?
*** Magog might have had some moral justification in his actions (and that's an argument in itself), but that jury wasn't justified in their decision, in a legal sense or, in my view, ''any'' sense. Say what you will about the Joker, the fact is that Magog murdered a defenseless man who was already in police custody in front of witnesses, with no possibility of self-defense, temporary insanity or any other circumstances that might diminish or mitigate his responsibility. That's an open and shut case of homicide however you spin it. And even if one of those justifications was presented, it's not the jury's job to decide who's 'good' and who's 'evil' or to take a moral view on the issue -- their job is to weigh the evidence and come to the appropriate verdict, and in this case they failed. Because if you're going to say that Magog can kill the Joker just because he's evil and deserves to die, then you're essentially that Magog can kill ''anyone'' he damn well pleases if he thinks they're evil and deserve to die, and by extension ''anyone'' can kill anyone else because they think they're evil and deserve to die. In cases such as this especially, the law only works because it applies to everyone; if you start making exceptions, then you might as well scrap the whole thing. What they did might be human, but being human doesn't stop something from being wrong.
** As for the traditional Justice League heroes, their reasoning is that it's not their place to take care of people like the Joker once and for all... that's supposed to be society's job. They're doing what they can by catching him and handing him over. If he escapes Arkham and kills again, and again and again, that's society's failure, not theirs - they shouldn't be forced into a position of unilaterally killing criminals because the justice system can't be trusted to get it right. You're right, the story's need for a CardboardPrison and the heroes' place on the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism are at odds, but the moral weight of the Joker's crimes isn't on Batman, Superman or any of the heroes, any more than it's on ''any'' private citizen who chose not to show up at the courthouse with a gun and wait for the Joker's arrival. It's on the Joker himself, and on the authorities who keep letting him escape.
*** So basically society is fed up with the superheroes toy morality, and create the NinetiesAntiHero to replace them because who want naive idealism when they can have action...Actually that's a very good metaphor for what happened in comics. Meta.
**** Then ''both'' societies are selfish and childish. Needing Superman to catch all the criminals for them is lazy and pathetic enough as it is. Now they need Superman to ''kill'' all the criminals himself, because they can't even be trusted to deal with them once they're caught? If that's how worthless society is, that even with the villains ''captured and gift-wrapped on the police station doorstep'' the authorities still can't handle it, then no wonder Magog and his breed wound up in charge. Batman's at fault, Superman's at fault, the JLA is at fault for not killing the criminals? Killing criminals is ''not their job''. Even ''catching'' criminals is not their job. Everything they do as superheroes is supposed to be a bonus for society, not a replacement for law and order. So how about blaming the judges and juries who keep buying these insanity pleas, or the security staff at Arkham and other cardboard prisons who keep letting them loose? Oh right, because they don't have names and it's easier to blame the highly visible people on the cover rather than the people behind the scenes who are actually at fault. You're right... this ''is'' just like real life.
***** ''Bravo!'' That was an excellent rebuttal to the guy calling the Silver Age heroes moral cowards. (This is not sarcasm; I'm being completely sincere here.)
**** Both the readers and the people in-universe made the same mistake: they went from "isn't it great that there's a superhero catching criminals for us" sense of gratitude to getting lazy, taking the superheroes for granted and instead thinking "criminals keep escaping but we can't be bothered to fix the courts and prisons ourselves, so it's the superheroes' fault for not killing criminals". People could say the exact same thing about police officers today ("the courts are always letting criminals go, so why don't the police just kill the criminals?"), and, as crazy and fascist as that is, it'd actually be ''more'' reasonable. At least the police are mortal public servants rather than superhuman beings answerable to no one.
** Disagree with Superman's actions and beliefs all you want, but what he did is not moral cowardice. Moral cowardice is refusing to take action for something you believe in because it's not prudent or too difficult to do so, or abandoning your beliefs because the circumstances make holding them too difficult or inconvenient. That's not what Superman did. He believes that murder is wrong, especially in the name of revenge, and he stuck to that. And he stuck to it despite having every reason to abandon said principle; for all Magog's taunts about how Superman didn't have the balls to do what he did and off the Joker, it's worth noting that of the two, only ''one'' that we know of had suffered in any meaningful sense at the Joker's hands -- the Joker killed Superman's ''wife and a good number of his closest friends'', let's not forget. It would have been easy for Superman to abandon his principles in that case, but he didn't. Because it's easy to keep to your principles when nothing's at stake, and just as easy to throw them away when something challenges them. On some level at least, Magog's words are just hot air; who is he to say that Superman should have abandoned his principles, having suffered nothing like what Superman suffered?

* Does Superman seem like more of a Mary Sue then usual in this book? He does nothing but pace around delaying any decision making and then get angry at Bruce and Diana for actually taking a step in doing something. The only person who seems more passive is the narrator. But Superman is treated to be someone who's always right in everything he does, and everyone is wrong every time they disagree with him (Batman, Diana, the entire population of Metropolis).
** More then usual yes, but the main problem with Superman's Character is that he's a MarySue to some degree at least 3/4 of the time anyway.
** Not to mention the fact that he get's 90% of the dialogue, and the [[NinetiesAntiHero Nineties Anti Heroes]] never say shit, making it even more one sided.
** I ''really'' disagree with that interpretation, since what he does bites him in the ass horribly and he acts pretty petulant when people disagree with him. I don't think Diana or Bruce are "right" or "wrong" either and saying that is greatly oversimplifying the story. The problem in the story to me is that they're all so stuck on their methods of doing what they think is right that disaster strikes. Plus the whole thing with Superman's character arc is that he's detached from humanity and eventually gets it back with the Clark Kent glasses, so I'd even say the MarySue parts are a deconstruction of that type of character.
** Also, I'm fairly certain that in the book, a lot of characters call Superman on being childish, among other things. I don't think portraying a character in a generally positive light is the same as him being a Mary Sue. Superman has a lot of flaws in KC
* On a similar subject, I think Diana is treated very unfairly both by Superman and Batman because she's willing to use lethal force in a kill-or-be-killed situation. In the carnage of battle, where enemies are totally willing to murder you without a second thought, you have to be prepared to take lives to defend yourself and the people fighting beside you. This wasn't like with Maxwell Lord, she was in a dangerous situation and had to act fast, but they treat her like she's unhinged and murderous. Her retort to Superman of "Not everyone has invulnerable skin" seems like a pretty good argument- if Captain Marvel hadn't shown up, I doubt any of the villains would have so much of ruffled Superman's cape (see how much build-up Magog got when he didn't even hurt him?), but the other Leaguers had way more to worry about.
** And Superman counters with "only the weak succumb to violence" and that's the whole argument; that killing would solve everybody's problems at the expense of being a solution a fascist, totalitarian regime would come up with, since it was easy to do.
** [[strike:This was published about a decade before the whole Maxwell Lord thing, and that whole bit with Maxwell Lord is still a point of contention with fans of the character.]] Ignore that part, I misread the bit about Maxwell in the original JBM. At the time KC was published portraying Wonder Woman that way was a real departure from the usual for the character, which is where a lot of the other character's reactions to her behavior in the comic come from. I'd almost call it a bit of a FunnyAneurysmMoment considering the direction the character has gone since KC.
*** Oh, I see. I didn't know it was a take on how Diana was being written at the time. Thank you. ^^
** Relatedly, I was amazed at the MoralMyopia of the escaping metas when they showed shock at Wonder Woman killing Von Bach... to stop him from killing one of the non-meta's Batman brought in. I can see where they expected Supe's side to pull their punches, and that as "edgy 90's antiheroes" they don't care about using lethal force, but why act so shocked one of the opponents was using it? Didn't they spend half the intro fighting each other to the death?
** "Nineties Anti Heroes allays enter blood rage mode when one of their team mates die. They treat it as shocking because their arrogance makes them feel invincible." Not that I personally believe that, but that's clearly the point Kingdom Come's trying to make here.
*** The whole point of Kingdom Come is that the Nineties Anti Heroes are essentially superpowered thugs. Think of it as a gang war: if a mafia goon is shot on a hit on another gang, his buddies are going to be outraged at his death, even though he has going to kill someone else. The Nineties Anti Heroes are too arrogant to realize their double standard.
**** Personally, this Troper believed Magog's case specifically was justified (even if the writers may not have felt that way), same with the other Nineties Anti Heroes (the quote about them stopping mass murderers like Genosyde). For this Troper, the problem came when supercrime had been virtually eradicated and the Nineties Anti Heroes still remained. In a dark world, heroes can be dark, but in a world that doesn't need them, the fact that those Nineties Anti Heroes continued to stay (and mess up the world back to the point where it was just as bad for the civilians as the Silver Age) was the issue. After the whole war and stuff, the reasonable solution became to remove both Ages of Superheroes entirely, since the world no longer needed them.
*** I always thought (admittedly, being pushed in that way by Jess Nevins' excellent annotations) that the scene with Von Bach was more to show that the anti-heroes really did care about each other on some level, and that things were more nuanced than they let on.
** My only problem with the story is that it seems to treat ThouShaltNotKill as a completely inviolable law. If an individual hero wants to adopt that moral code for himself/herself, I totally respect that. And, likewise, I have no problem applying that code to your average "bank robber" type villain; indeed, they should be taken alive. But it breaks down when you try to apply it to all heroes in all situations. As one of the younger heroes puts it, "Who bagged Eclipso, huh? Who toasted Ra's Al Ghul? Guys like us, that's who! We saved lives, man!" The latter is a mostly immortal KnightTemplar (at ''best'') who wants to kill 9/10 of humanity, the former is the corrupted, former ''[[EldritchAbomination Wrath Of God]]''. If these younger heroes really were able to truly, permanently, [[KilledOffForReal Kill Them Off For Real]], I have no problem with that; it's like telling a soldier that he's not allowed to kill Hitler, only capture him, even if killing ends the war tomorrow but capturing wouldn't. I likewise have no problem with Magog's treatment of The Joker. The next page, Captain Comet tries to rebut, and while he does make a good point that these young heroes shouldn't fire wildly into civilian crowds in an attempt to ace the villains, he never refutes the point itself.
** Captain Comet's rebuttal seemed to be referencing the scene from the end of the first issue where two groups of "heroes" were firing on each other and Superman first reappears. Maybe their killings of villains like Eclipso and Ra's Al Ghul were justifiable, but were there even any straight-up villains in the story? ThouShaltNotKill seems like a good rule when you're just fighting for the hell of it which seems to be what most of them are doing.
** Briefly getting back to Wonder Woman, it should be noted that both Clark and Bruce point out that Diana's aggression is, on some level, the way she's expressing her anger at being rejected and cast out by the Amazons and her self-loathing at what she views as the failure of her mission to bring peace to the world; she's lashing out and on some level is using the need to bring the younger generation in order as an excuse. IIRC they're not so much upset at her using lethal force if necessary but that her aggressive approach is based on the wrong reasons.

* Okay, here's one that bugged me, some of the designs for the antiheroes: One based off Chun Li, one based of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, one based off of Duke Nukem, this just comes off as "every character kids these days are growing up with sucks, and the ones we grew up with are totally awesome and would kick their asses".
** You are reading too much into it; but then again, save for Chun Li... the original Ninja turtles were pretty violent, and the Duke is a chauvinist, jingoist, redneck who rescues women so he can pay them to show their breasts to him.
** Well to be fair, a Duke Nukem expy makes sense in KC, since he's basically a NinetiesAntiHero himself.
** They also have a superpowered Elvis and the Village People. I don't think it's supposed to be taken as anything more than fun Easter eggs for comics fans.
** One of the panels in issue 3 has Captain America, Thor, SpiderMan, IronMan in his 60's classic armor and Dr Strange.
** Your reading too much into it. Alex Ross had the unenviable task of coming up with around 100 characters, most of them new. Ripping off the imagery of other character is inevitable.
** Rorschach is seen in the bar. I'm going to guess that alot of the heroes are actually FANS of the fictional characters.

* The fact that KingdomCome is praised for it's art. The art is horrible! An awful mixture of UncannyValley, and crotch shots of the male character's bulging packages! WTF?!?!?
** you read some comics that were published at the time? We were years away from using photoshop for everything, the art in most comics was plain horrible. It's praised because after all, it's realistic painting, none of it was done using a computer and it was done by a single guys. Painting each page involved pretty much using a whole canvas for each panel, so it took a LONG time to do. and then, Rob Liefield was at the top of his game when this was published, believe me, it was like night and day. Photo-realistic vs a guy who will not draw feet, fingers or faces if he can get away with it.
** Man, what were you smoking when you read it? I don't see a single moment of UncannyValley or crotch shots. I guess YMMV in the extreme for you. All I can say is that I love the painted artwork. And also many of the scenes would make great posters.
** While this troper tends to disagree regarding the UncannyValley (not nearly as bad as say, Marvels) he very much agrees with the whole "package" bit. Mr. Ross' attention to the genitalia almost borders on AuthorAppeal, and is more than a little creepy.
*** When Captain Marvel makes his first appearance in uniform standing in his iconic pose with hands on his hips and with the evil smirk on his face, was this troper the only one who noticed the bulge before noticing the big flashy lightning bolt on his chest?
** Not just the Men either. Ross puts a lot of detail into the ass curves and vag lines of the women too. Of course, that's not quite as bad for ThisTroper (being a heterosexual male), but still, way to much attention to the naughty bits of all characters involved.
** AlexRoss likes to use photos of live models in costume for his reference work. So when you've got a bunch of models in tights, they look like ...models in tights. Things show.
*** Or, taking into consideration the ton of deconstruction, parody and nostalgia charm, it could be a call to the over-sexualization of the superhero genre.

* How stupid is Green Arrow? He's part of Batman's task-force, all of whom have been specifically ordered to ''stem the loss of life''. So does GA use his excellent archery skills to disable the rioting prisoners? No. He spends the whole battle shooting holes in Green Lantern, who is there ''for the same reason that he is''. Gosh, Ollie, do ya think that maybe if you weren't so busy perforating a fellow hero, maybe he could have saved Dinah from being shot? And maybe if he wasn't bleeding all over the place thanks to you, he could have saved more people from the bomb? I know that Ollie is usually a major tool, but never to the point that he'd act against his best interests.

* Why do people think that KingdomCome ended the DarkAge? KingdomCome came out in 1996, and featured one group of superhumans who use lethal force and cause a lot of collateral damage, and another group of superhumans who go overboard in their methods, disregard civil liberties, and attack the human governments. TheAuthority came out in 1999 and features a group of superhumans who do both at the same time and laugh about it.
** Probably because it's {{Anvilicious}} attack of DarkAge tropes is often used by the SilverAge fan boys that are RunningTheAsylum as justification for the general BadAssDecay comics have been suffering for the past 10 year or so.
** Or, to look at it a bit more objectively ''without'' the complaining, it's most likely something similar to how the publication of ''{{Watchmen}}'' / ''TheDarkKnightReturns'' is generally heralded as the start of the Dark Age; it's a convenient signpost for when attitudes started to shift from one mindset to another. The shifts weren't instantaneous -- comics weren't ''instantly'' inundated with NinetiesAntiHero-style characters immediately after the earlier two came out, for example, just as the Dark Age mindset and trappings didn't immediately disappear when ''KingdomCome'' came out -- but overall the work fits thematically with the overall shift in attitude that comics underwent and inspired a number of similar works to start coming out. (This, of course, assumes you accept that the Dark Age has ended, which even a look at the arguments surrounding the Dark Age page on this wiki alone will suggest is not a unanimous viewpoint.)
* Kingdom Come seems to break the most important rule. ShowDontTell, there is far too much narration and the only people who are given any real characterization are the trinity and Spectre and the preacher. We are told that the newer generation of heroes goes wacko but are never shown their side or why, it just jumps from "Magog kills the Joker" to "outright chaos". Sure there was a logical progression of events leading to that but we are never shown it or indeed told it. We are just told that's how it is. The same thing happens with the humans in the UN. They are nothing but a diablos ex machina. Once again we have to be told their motivations, never shown. Also, I know the silver age had a thing with boners, but that's no reason to fill the comic with them.
** Does it really matter ''why'' young heroes are causing chaos? The fact is, they are. They're fighting in the streets with no apparent regard for the lives of innocent bystanders. I'm not sure what "motivations" you were expecting to hear from them.

** Disagree with Superman's actions and beliefs all you want, but what he did is not moral cowardice. Moral cowardice is refusing to take action for something you believe in because it's not prudent or too difficult to do so, or abandoning your beliefs because the circumstances make holding them too difficult. That's not what Superman did. He believes that murder is wrong, especially in the name of revenge, and he stuck to that. And he stuck to it despite having every reason to abandon said principle; for all Magog's taunts about how Superman didn't have the balls to do what he did and off the Joker, it's worth noting that of the two, only ''one'' that we know of had suffered in any meaningful sense at the Joker's hands -- the Joker killed Superman's ''wife and a good number of his closest friends'', let's not forget. It would have been easy for Superman to abandon his principles in that case, but he didn't. Because it's easy to keep to your principles when nothing's at stake, and just as easy to throw them away when something challenges them. On some level at least, Magog's words are just hot air; who is he to say that Superman should have abandoned his principles, having suffered nothing like what Superman suffered?

** It's perhaps worth noting in light of the suggestions and accusations of moral cowardice that are being presented here that of Magog and Superman, for all the talk about how the Joker doesn't deserve to live and how Superman's idealism doesn't comfort the dead, only ''one'' of them in that situation has suffered directly as a result of the Joker's actions -- let's not forget that Superman's ''wife'' and ''a good number of his friends'' died in the Joker's attack. Magog might have a point about the Joker deserving to death, and he might have found it very easy to sneer at, as he says, Superman taking him in for something "he didn't have the stones to do himself", but on some level that's just empty posturing and grandstanding -- what exactly has he suffered at the hands of the Joker that entitles him to appoint himself his executioner? Disagree with Superman's stance all you want, but I'd argue that Superman following his convictions even when he has every reason to abandon them to take his revenge on the Joker is ''not'' moral cowardice; it's easy to keep your convictions if nothing's challenging them. And who is Magog -- or we, for that matter -- to say he ''should'' abandon them, even under such circumstances?

*** Magog might have been justified in his actions (and that's an argument in itself), but that jury wasn't justified in their decision, in a legal sense or, in my view, ''any'' sense. Say what you will about the Joker, the fact is that Magog murdered a defenseless man who was already in police custody in front of witnesses, with no possibility of self-defense, temporary insanity or any other circumstances that might diminish or mitigate his responsibility. That's an open and shut case of homicide however you spin it. And even if one of those justifications was presented, it's not the jury's job to decide who's 'good' and who's 'evil' -- their job is to weigh the evidence and come to the appropriate verdict, and in this case they failed. Because if you're going to say that Magog can kill the Joker just because he's evil and deserves to die, then you're essentially that Magog can kill ''anyone'' he damn well pleases if he thinks they're evil and deserve to die, and by extension ''anyone'' can kill anyone else because they think they're evil and deserve to die. In cases such as this especially, the law only works because it applies to everyone; if you start making exceptions, then you might as well scrap the whole thing. What they did might be human, but being human doesn't stop something from being wrong.

** It's perhaps worth noting in light of the suggestions and accusations of moral cowardice that are being presented here that of Magog and Superman, for all the talk about how the Joker doesn't deserve to live and how Superman's idealism doesn't comfort the dead, only ''one'' of them in that situation has suffered directly as a result of the Joker's actions -- let's not forget that Superman's ''wife'' and ''a good number of his friends'' died in the Joker's attack. Magog might have a point about the Joker deserving to death, and he might have found it very easy to sneer at, as he says, Superman taking him in for something "he didn't have the stones to do himself", but on some level that's just empty posturing and grandstanding -- what exactly has he suffered at the hands of the Joker that entitles him to appoint himself his executioner? Disagree with Superman's stance all you want, but I'd argue that Superman following his convictions even when he has every reason to abandon them to take his revenge on the Joker is ''not'' moral cowardice; it's easy to keep your convictions if nothing's challenging them.

*** I disagree. I think the Jury was justified in their decision. If someone "murdered" Osama Bin Laden, then what jury would convict him? Now if someone who was Osama Bin Laden, and Charles Manson all rolled into one, continually escaped prison, and killed as many people as some dictators, and did it a manner so shockingly nightmarish, then would you vote guilty if you where on that jury?

***** Oh, c'mon, Kingdom Come didn't kill the DarkAge, it was already dying of natural causes when KC came out. Even {{Watchmen}} couldn't have ended the BronzeAge by itself if the tastes of the public weren't already changing. We only find convenient for clasification reasons to pick a well-known an well-liked work and use it as the end of a period and the begining of other. The truth is, the [[NinetiesAntiHero nineties anti-hero]] was a fad and it ended like every fad ends. If it were still financially succesfull, be sure they would be doing it, but practically nobody likes it anymore. And if you like dark, there's a lot of dark works being made nowadays by [[MarvelComics Marvel]], {{Wildstorm}}, [[DarkHorseComics Dark Horse]] and others, damn, probably is being done more "dark" than "camp" if you take all into acount, and a lot better than it was done in the nineties to boot, but [[DCComics mainstream DC]], who wasn't strong on it even in the nineties, is probably not the best place to look for it. And this using your definition of "camp", because dividing all the works in "dark" and "camp" without nothing in between is ridiculously simplistic, and saying that nowadays everything falls in the "camp" side of your simplistic clasification is more than a little near-sighted. I don't think nowadays there's being made a lot of "camp" by any definition of {{Camp}} that is not "whatever doesn't measures to my standards of dark".

****** ASBAR was not advertised as a parody. The All-Star line was basically pushed as each of the characters they featured at their most iconic. If ASBAR was a parody then either someone was lied to or Batman at his most iconic is a parody.

* You know what Bugs me, how one sided and preachy Kingdom Come comes off as. I like the art, the whole "biblical imagery" theme, and the idea of [[TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Age]] antiheroes in conflict against the [[TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] heroes, but the way it's all "[[TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] is the only legitimate option" and how it lead to over a decade worth of the whole sale removal of everything resembling the [[TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Age]] from DC canon is just a massive WallBanger. 10 years later, InfiniteCrisis was just one big excuse force feed us the same garbage. It would have been much better if the message was "there's room in the DCU for both kinds of characters" not "the new characters suck, the old characters where better" Shoved down all our throats. A better ending would be Superman and Magog realizing that although their methods are different they share the same goals and should be working together.

** No, I understand your point just fine. But in your righteous indignation over feeling like DC's insulted your reading tastes, you don't seem to understand the difference between your preference as a reader and the moral code that, simply by having Superman as their leading superhero, defines their setting. Let's put it this way. You said "a better ending would be Superman and Magog realizing that although their methods are different they share the same goals and should be working together". Are you seriously saying that Superman should allow other heroes to go around killing people just because they "share the same goals"? Any perceived {{wallbanger}} you have with him not doing that is nothing compared to the monumental CharacterDerailment it'd represent if he did.

* Superman stops from killing the UN leaders. Okay, fair enough, no-killing rule, totally in-character. But then he (and the writers) simply forgives them for just killing a bunch of his old friends among other people. [[{{Wallbanger}} So Supes couldn't get along with Magog who killed exactly one person (who totally deserved it) but is ready to give a free card to motherf@><ing genocidal murderers?]] They should be jailed, tried and sentenced not offered to work together. And don't tell me 'They are elected heads of states': first it implies that [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem laws don't apply to them]] and second - so was Hitler.

**** But wait, If she isn't his cousin in the KingdomCome timeline, then how come in the JSA story that crossed over with KingdomCome it's her that's his BerserkButton upon returning? Also he calls her Kara. Was that still her name during the Atlantean era?
***** That was her name during the Atlantian period of her history. The reason that the main Earth Power Girl tried to connect with Kingdom Come Superman was because of his age, and his powers, he was much like her cousin, Kal-L of Earth-2 who was murdered by Superboy-Prime in InfiniteCrisis. This was an event of AllTheMyriadWays being averted.

** That's an oversimplication. It took ten years for the world to settle into its current framework, though the killing off the supervillains was a major factor, you can't blame it entirely on Magog's trial. Most of the "new breed" are bored teenagers with superpowers who would readily kill a villain without being told to. Also recall that Luthor and the other human villains were manipulating things behind the scenes. Chaos was good for them.
** Assuming you're speakin in-universe, "a morally ambiguous act, yes, but one that few would disagree with " is projection. The new heroes have grown up, their entire lives in varying degrees of terror. They have always known fear because of the many villains. They see the Silver Age heroes as ineffectual, and rally behind Magog.

** It's not one sided; both classic superheroes and 90's superheroes are regarded as "out of touch with mankind" since the old guard pretty much believes themselves to be above humans since they are the good guys, and the new breed of supers just don't care as long as there is a good fight. Even the Spectre, an angel, has trouble seeing the difference between right and wrong. I don't know how many of you read it when it was being published, as separate books, but it was just at the peak of 90's superheroes popularity, so it was a contemporaneous critique, not one made in hindsight. The story proved itself right in that very few, if any, of the 90's dark heroes made it to the turn of the millenium.

**You are also forgetting that in the end, it took the sacrifice of Captain Marvel, in a very anvilicious portray of the "death of innocence" to bring the conflict to an "end". After Marvel died and the pastor spoke to Superman pleading to his human side, Clark Kent; the old guard realized their ways had also being wrong since they forgot to protect the humans and the innocent. Magog didn't repent because the old guard was "better", he repent because his actions had consequences, and his ways had killed millions in a direct way and he learned of the responsabilities he had the hard way; look at it this way, yeah, he got rid of the Parasite, a pretty dangerous supervillain, at the minimum cost of irradiating all of Kansas and killing millions of innocent bystanders. Anvilicious? Certainly, but one of the many ways in wich 90's superheroes behaved at the time.
**Now regarding infinite crisis, you seem to miss the point that Superboy Prime is the only one complaining the current DC universe is not like the silverage, and he is the VILLAIN of the story. One second he complains the new heroes are "too dark" and the next he kills them without thinking becuase "they are not real and they are wrong". Yep, he's the enbodiment of the 90's fans alright.
*** Is he? Because this description looks more like modern writers who hate the Dark Age, bring back the Silver Age elements... and the level of blood and violence in their stories is higher than Dark Age's ever was. It seems that like the only thing many people saw in Watchmen was its darkness and ahtiheroes, the only thing many people saw in KC was 'Dark Age sucks'.

*** Kingdom Come ended in a middle ground, with supers working WITH humans to improve their lifestyle, not ABOVE humans, they realized they weren't better because of their powers or beliefs. That was pretty much the point of leaving the final decision to Captain Marvel/Billy Batson, since he was both a godlike being and a human; and even a brainwashed Billy could see the conflict made no sense. Billy stands in for the human reader; since we are supposed to know both real real and real fiction. Superman calls him on that, he tells Batson that "I know I can stop the bomb, that much I'm certain, what I don't know is if I should be allowed to." If you choose to get offended because most people like their escapist fiction to feature heroic, well centered and upstanding characters, well that's too bad; but riddle me this, how many dark age comics have endured to this date? Exactly. (I'm willing to concede that at leats Spawn was intresting in its premise, and that he only resorted to guns because he was a mercenary in life, and the whole green magic counter running off; but out of all the books out of the dark age, it is the only one remotely interesting to read).

** You CAN have both. Read DC and read Marvel or Wildstorm or Dark Horse or Image. Or read DC's Lobo or some of the Green Lantern titles (hey, if it's DarkerAndEdgier you want, you should love the ''Blackest Night'' story). But you cannot have Superman, Batman and the rest of the traditional DC heroes and DarkerAndEdgier heroes in the ''same setting'' without raising the obvious question of why the hell the traditional good guys haven't beaten the tar out of the newcomers. THAT's the point ''Kingdom Come'' (and other titles like ''What's so Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way?'', as well as pretty much anyone who tries to be Batman but isn't Bruce Wayne) is making. The market already has plenty of DarkerAndEdgier heroes. Just don't expect them to live and work in-universe alongside Superman, because it wouldn't make any sense.

**** Hell, now that I think about it, if you ''really'' want a NinetiesAntihero DC title, read ''Batman and Robin All-Stars''. There you go, DarkerAndEdgier to the point of pure [[HeroicSociopath heroic sociopathy]], written by Frank Miller himself (it even solved the "what do we do with Superman and the Justice League" question by making Superman and Green Lantern simpering wusses, and Wonder Woman a fellow sociopath). Except all the other DC fans ''hated'' it and made it the laughing stock of the company, while praising the {{Reconstruction}} ''Superman All-Star'' series that ran alongside it. And that right there should tell you everything you need to know about why DC doesn't do {{Nineties Antihero}}es.

***** He was also behind the [[SoBadItsHorrible God aweful]] Acclaim Era XO-Manowar reboot that helped kill ValiantComics. Consider that before you label him "one of the best writers in the medium". Ugh.

*** I disagree with that interurtation. The whole point of Libertarianism is you can do whatever you want AS LONG AS it doesn't hurt others. So if they battled for fun in the desert then they'd be libertarians. But they battle in the city, so they're sociopaths.

*** So basically soceity is fed up with the superheroes toy morality, and create the NinetiesAntiHero to replace them because who want naive idealism when they can have action...Actually that's a very good metaphor for what happened in comics. Meta.

** "Nineties Anti Heroes allways enter blood rage mode when one of their team mates die. They treat it as shocking because their arogance makes them feel invincible." Not that I personally beleve that, but that's clearly the point Kingdom Come's trying to make here.

** Well to be fair, a Duke Nukem expy makes sense in KC, since he's basicly a NinetiesAntiHero himself.
** They also have a superpowered Elvis and the Village People. I don't think it's supposed to be taken as anything more than fun easter eggs for comics fans.

** Your reading too much into it. Alex Ross had the inenviable task of coming up with around 100 characters, most of them new. Ripping off the imagry of other character is inevitable.

* The fact that KingdomCome is praised for it's art. The art is horrible! An aweful mixture of UncannyValley, and crotch shots of the male character's bulging packages! WTF?!?!?

** While this troper tends to disagree regarding the UncannyValley (not nearly as bad as say, Marvels) he very much agrees with the whole "package" bit. Mr. Ross' attention to the genitalia allmost borders on AuthorAppeal, and is more than a little creepy.
*** When Captain Marvel makes his first appearance in uniform standing in his iconic pose with hands on his hips and with the evil smirk on his face, was this troper the only one who noticed the bulge before noticing the big flashy lightning bolt on his chest?
** Not just the Men either. Ross puts a lot of detail into the ass curves and vag lines of the women too. Of course, that's not quite as bad for ThisTroper (being a hetrosexual male), but still, way to much attention to the naughty bits of all characters involved.

*** Or, taking into consideration the ton of decostruction, parody and nostalgia charm, it could be a call to the over-sexualization of the superhero genre.

* How stupid is Green Arrow? He's part of Batman's taskforce, all of whom have been specifically ordered to ''stem the loss of life''. So does GA use his excellent archery skills to disable the rioting prisoners? No. He spends the whole battle shooting holes in Green Lantern, who is there ''for the same reason that he is''. Gosh, Ollie, do ya think that maybe if you weren't so busy perforating a fellow hero, maybe he could have saved Dinah from being shot? And maybe if he wasn't bleeding all over the place thanks to you, he could have saved more people from the bomb? I know that Ollie is usually a major tool, but never to the point that he'd act against his best interests.

* Why do people think that KingdomCome ended the DarkAge? KingdomCome came out in 1996, and featureed one group of superhumans who use lethal force and cause a lot of colateral damage, and another group of superhumans who go overboard in their methods, disregard civil liberties, and attack the human governments. TheAuthority came out in 1999 and features a group of superhumans who do both at the same time and laugh about it.
** Proably because it's {{Anvilicious}} attack of DarkAge tropes is often used by the SilverAge fan boys that are RunningTheAsylum as juctifiaction for the general BadAssDecay comics have been suffering for the past 10 year or so.
* Kingdom Come seems to break the most important rule. ShowDontTell, there is far too much narration and the only people who are given any real characterisation are the trinity and Spectre and the preacher. We are told that the newer generation of heroes goes wacko but are never shown their side or why, it just jumps from "Magog kills the Joker" to "outright chaos". Sure there was a logical progression of events leading to that but we are never shown it or indeed told it. We are just told that's how it is. The same thing happens with the humans in the UN. They are nothing but a diablos ex machina. Once again we have to be told their motivations, never shown. Also, I know the silver age had a thing with boners, but thats no reason to fill the comic with them.

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